The Academic Senate works behind the scenes to most students, but their actions greatly affect student life. Academic Senate consists of all tenured and tenure-track faculty at UC Davis; they are a division of the UC systemwide Academic Senate.

They have an amazingly complex set of bylaws, which even includes a Committee on Committees. If you want to know why some University academic policy is the way it is, most likely that policy will trace back to Academic Senate. They also control undergraduate scholarships to a large degree.

In addition, Academic Senate essentially controls the direction that curricula and departments will take on a University-wide level. When a professor wants to teach a new course, the proposal must pass through the Senate's Courses Committee, which then determines what appears in the catalog. They also periodically review entire departments, and see if it meets the University's goals. Of course, this is faculty reviewing itself, so changes at this level are far less drastic than at the Administration level. They also award the Distinguished Teaching Award.